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CHAPTER 8 The Science ofPolitics It is disconcerting then to find that on other questions Hume takes a stand, even lays down general rules, as iffor all men and all times. But he is speaking with the authority ofprudence, not science, as a man who has learned wisdom more than truth. And his notion of prudence implied that any attempt to settle political questions scientifically was chimerical and dangerous. The all- \ important but subtle difference between the rules of a prudent man and the laws of a social scientist never concerned Hume,1 because the possibility of social science in the twentieth-century sense was not an issue in his day. He was thinking of other opponents. He was arguing against three sorts of people: those, like Clarke or Hobbes, who tried to deduce rules for human conduct from what Hume regarded as metaphysical absurdities; those, like Berkeley, who denied a natural order because they affirmed man's direct dependence on God (the appearance of gravitation in some instances did not justify, Berkeley said, concluding it was universal, because God might act sometimes in one way, and sometimes in another, "just as He sees convenient"); those, like Bolingbroke, who, in order to undo Walpole, argued that a government should stand or fall on the merits of the governors. Against the first, Hume was anxious to show that views about politics and morals must be drawn from what men are really like, not from imaginary pictures of human nature; against the second, he wished to 1. He has as a result been credited, especially by Frederick Watkins (Hurne: Theory ofPolitics) and also, somewhat, by J, A. Passmore (Hurne's Intentions) with being an inchoate social scientist (although Passmore sees a conflict between Hume's interest in science and other aspects ofhis philosophy). This interpretation, however, misunderstands the nature of his generalizations and the purpose ofhis antimetaphysical arguments. It reflects also the current tendency to regard prudence as a primitive form of science. If Hume has anything to tell the social scientist, it is rather to remind him of how delicate is the process of formulating and using general rules about human beings. David Hume establish the existence of a natural order that is safe from divine interference; the last he wished to persuade that violent abuse of a minister is both unnecessary and dangerous because the nature of a government depends mainly on constitutional arrangements and laws which should not be lightly challenged . He argued, therefore, for experimental knowledge, that is, for experience against "hypotheses" in the sense of metaphysical or a priori principles. And he tried to show that experience revealed the persistence of certain regularities that did not conform to the abstract principles preferred by philosophers , and could not be destroyed by either human or divine will. Yet when he spoke of an experimental science of man, Hume did not mean it strictly. In fact, he sharply distinguished between the "experimental" and the "scientific" methods, and regarded them as opposed to one another. In speaking of the correct method in morals, he says, we can only expect success, by following the experimental method, and deducing general maxims from a comparison of particular instances. The other scientific method, where a general abstract principle is first established, and is afterwards branched out into a variety of inferences and conclusions, may be more perfect in itself, but suits less the imperfection of human nature, and is a common source of illusion and mistake in this as well as in other subjects.1 He was not proposing to "explain" the causes of human phenomena, but only to gather correct observations of human nature and arrange them in some orderly fashion. Even in the Treatise, he intended not to explain why men thought as they did, but only to describe what occurred when they thought. For despite his admiration for Newton, and his adaptation of Newton's method for his psychology, Hume had a simpler and more consistent view of science. Newton held that science was incomplete as long as it remained purely descriptive; science had to discover causes, which could, Newton suggested, be seen in phenomena. And he sometimes spoke about gravity as if it were a force implied by the phenomena observed, thus justifying those disciples who persisted in treating gravitation as an explanatory principle. Newton, of course, had no wish to deny, as Hume did, a human capacity for understanding the nature of things. This led him at other times to...

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